Around the outside of the court, rising like a forest of twisted pillars, are Tudor chimneys of various designs. There are over such chimneys around Hampton Court, but they are not original; rather, they are Victorian copies based on original Tudor designs.
To one side of Base Court is a passage leading to a display area where Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar is on display. This ornate, gilded clock was built around by Nicholas Oursian, and shows the time, high tide, phase of the moon, day of the year, sign of the Zodiac, and the date.
This was the centre of palace life in Tudor times, and up to people ate meals in the hall. As you pass through the hall, note the stained glass windows bearing the W initial of Thomas Wolsey. The hall leads to the processional route to the council chamber and the Chapel Royal. Here is the Haunted Gallery, where the ghost of Catherine Howard, Henry's fifth wife, is said to appear. The ghostly tale, based on real events, is this: when Catherine learned that Henry had charged her with adultery, she tried to intercept him in the chapel and plead her innocence.
She was seized by guards before she could reach the king, and dragged to her rooms, screaming and begging the king for mercy. Her ghost is said to still appear, haunting the gallery.
Perhaps the most wonderfully decorated room at Hampton Court is the Chapel Royal, built by Wolsey and still in regular use for religious services. The vaulted ceiling was built by Henry VIII and features glorious painted, gilded pendants and decorative vaulting ribs.
Once you've had your fill of Tudor Hampton you can leap forward a few hundred years and enter a realm of stately elegance in the apartments built for Mary II and her co-ruler, William III.
The Apartments are completely separate, with their own staircases and suites of rooms. The King's Staircase features fabulous murals in classical style by Antonio Verrio, meant to emulate a grand Roman hall.
The King's Staircase leads to the Guard Chamber, which is full to the ceiling with a collection of 17th and 18th-century weapons.
You then pass through a suite of connecting chambers, including the King's Eating Room, where the fireplace is surrounded by magnificent woodwork carved by Grinling Gibbons. The King's Apartments conclude with the Little Bedchamber and Great Bedchamber, and a set of private apartments where the king could relax, far from the gaze of attending courtiers.
The Queen's apartments were created out of the Tudor quarters meant for Anne Boleyn. Vanbrugh was responsible for the fireplace in the Guard Chamber, with rather amusing, larger than life figures of guards on both sides of the fireplace.
The painted ceiling is superb, executed by Sir James Thornhill to depict members of the royal family in a scene of classical allegory. This is the final suite of rooms on view at the palace, created for George II and his royal family.
Though this suite of chambers is restrained compared to the ebullient baroque designs of Mary II and William III's apartments, the major interest is not the architecture, but the quite superb collection of art on display, among them works by Caravaggio and Sir Peter Lely. These are outshone, however, by the painted panels in the Wolsey Closet. She later met her death by beheading at the Tower of London.
Ever after, sightings of the deeply agitated Catherine have been reported on the gallery, now renamed the Haunted Gallery. The Chapel Royal boasts a superb golden hammer-beam roof. Henry's last marriage, to Catherine Parr took place there in , in the Chapel Royal. The Palace continued to be occupied by Henry's successors, the unfortunate Charles I was imprisoned there during the Civil War, after his execution the palace was retained for the use of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.
He also planted the long avenue of limes that radiate from the East Front as well as installing the Great Canal. William who suffered badly from asthma disliked the smog laden air of London and wished for a country retreat. This part of the Palace was badly damaged by fire in and has since been restored. The gardens were laid out in formal style and the maze was planted around Later Monarchs Queen Anne only made fleeting visits to the palace, as noted by Alexander Pope in the third canto of The Rape of the Lock: Close by those meads, for ever crowned with flowers, Where Thames with pride surveys his rising towers, There stands a structure of majestic fame, Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home; Here thou, Great Anna! The Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley was probably the greatest artist to have worked prolifically in the Hampton Court area, although he did not focus his attention on the palace itself.
In a series of works painted in , Sisley depicted the riverside, a regatta, the bridge across the Thames from the side and below and the road to and from Hampton Court. View larger OpenStreetMap.
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